Reel

Reel sat on the cold stone floor of her cell, her shell to the wall, and glared at her jailers’ backs through the thick iron bars of the door. They, in turn, ignored her, the same as they had for the past two days. They’d only spoken to her when she tried to force the door. That had brought a flurry of shouts and curses, as they used the butts of their weapons to hammer her hands loose and send her staggering back to fall on the narrow bed that was the room’s only furniture. Well, there was that and a small bucket–she studiously avoided looking at that, or thinking about its contents.

She reached up gingerly to probe for the hundredth time at the empty spot on her head where her implant had resided. She winced; she’d gotten so used to the implant’s presence that its absence unnerved her. It was like losing a tooth and running her tongue over the place in her gums where it had been, where it should have been. She brushed the raw flesh with one long claw. Even the barest touch set the macerated skin alight, and she snatched her hand back with a quiet hiss. No matter how many times she checked, it still hurt.

Idiot girl. What did you expect? She knew better. Just like being stricken. You never learn. Have to stick your head in the reactor core twice, just to make sure it really burns.

It could have been Argo’s voice, except she couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t hear anyone, in fact, except for the quiet muttering of the two German guards outside her cell. A vacuum gaped in her mind where her ability to Link with her crew should have been, worse in its own way than the emptiness on the back of her skull. Lusser and his men had snatched away everything that the implant gave her, leaving her empty.

Well, not quite everything. As she explored the edges of the gaps in her mind, she found fragments of knowledge: bits of schematics, and fractions of checklists, random facts. Strangely, she could still understand German, but couldn’t find the words to speak it. Nothing that she could use, she thought bitterly.

“Attention!” Someone barked, and the two guards snapped upright. Reel’s head perked up; heavy footsteps ground down the hall towards her. Who was coming?

Clutching the bed for support, she struggled to her feet as von Braun rounded the corner, flanked by Konrad and Lusser. “At ease,” Lusser said, waving the two men back carelessly. He stepped right up to the bars of Reel’s cell and peered in at her up the bridge of his nose.

“You,” she hissed in Torellan, putting all the venom she could muster into the word. “When I get my hands on you…” Come to that, maybe she could. Charging at the bars, she made a wild swipe for the man, crashing against them in a furious rush and clangor.

Lusser anticipated the move, stepping smoothly back out of reach. All that Reel came up with was a handful of empty air. “As you can see, removing the device has reduced her to a somewhat animal state,” he said, brushing imaginary dust off his coat.

“I’ll show you an animal state, just as soon as I get my claws on you,” she snarled at him, grinding those same claws against the bars of her cage.

He gestured at her with one hand and went on in the same cool, dispassionate tone. “She has lost all ability with the German language, and become somewhat savage.”

Not all of it, you piece of vent-slime. She could understand the men perfectly; she just couldn’t muster a single word of German herself. She had no idea why that was the case; maybe simply from hearing it for so long? Whatever the case, she was glad for it. Maybe it would give her an edge.

“Well that’s only to be expected, Dr. Lusser,” Von Braun said unhappily, his face pinched. “We knew that it was in part a translation device.”

“So she said,” Lusser sneered. “But look at her. She sits on the floor, as if she doesn’t even know what the bed is.”

“If I tried to lay down on that, I’d topple right off it,” Reel spat through the bars. “You miserable piece of shit. Damned cowardly, crack-shelled Efreet-spawn.” She warmed to the insults, reveling in the fact that she could say whatever she liked to the man. “When I get out of here, the first thing I’m going to do is strap you to the outside of Lander One and run you through the atmosphere until you burn to cinders.” An empty threat; Lander One would never fly again, Lusser himself had seen to that. But the visual was satisfying. She’d never done violence to anyone, hadn’t even ever felt the urge, but for Lusser she would make an exception.

Lusser waited with exaggerated patience for her words to taper off, and then let the silence linger a moment longer. “She has been throwing herself at the bars ever since we put her in here, to no purpose. Even a Jew would have realized by now that there’s no way to force this door. I suspect that the implant may also improve their higher reasoning skills, raising them…somewhat, at least…above the level of beasts.”

Rage flooded through her, driving all reasoned thought from her mind. “Bastard!” She screamed, ramming her shoulder at the bars again. “Let me out, blast you!” Hot, frustrated tears sprang to her eyes. “Let me out!”

“Case in point,” the man said, smirking. He turned to Konrad. “I assume your own…experiments,” his lips curled in disgust at the word. “With the device will have confirmed as much. What was it you wanted to ask her?”

Experiments? Reel hoped they hadn’t tried to break open the implant; they didn’t have any spares on the Old Bug, and she’d be cut off from the rest of the crew until she could get a new one. Even if she got a new one, she’d have to redo all of the simulations she’d done through her whole life to get back what she’d lost. Years wasted. The realization brought another rush of angry tears, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand.

“Erm…No, I don’t think it does that,” Konrad fidgeted with the dirty edge of his lab coat as he looked at her, his expression guilty. As well he should be.

“You were supposed to be my friend.” Reel’s voice dropped to a ragged whisper as she looked at Konrad. “How could you? How could you?”

He flinched, glancing nervously at von Braun and Lusser. “I do think that I might have picked up some of her language though. I wanted to test that.”

What? How in the black could he have managed that? She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but stayed silent, curious.

“By all means,” Von Braun said, cutting off Lusser as he opened his mouth to speak. He closed it with a click, a nasty gleam in his eye.

“Thank you.” Konrad stepped a little closer to the cell, hunching his shoulders. He licked his lips and darted one more sidelong glance at Dr. Lusser. Turning back to Reel, he choked out a sentence in broken Torellan. “Fake not understand.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She blinked in astonishment. He mangled the words badly, and his accent was nothing short of atrocious, but still…she understood him.

“Look at that!” Von Braun exclaimed, pointing at her. “I think you got through to her. Keep trying.”

Konrad shuffled his feet and coughed to clear his throat. “Fake not understand!”

What was he…oh, he wanted her to pretend that she couldn’t understand him. But why? She studied his face; a fat bead of sweat dripped down his forehead, his eyes pleading. She hesitated. What game was he playing?

Dr. Lusser grabbed Konrad’s thin shoulder roughly, digging his fingers into the joint. “What are you trying to ask her?” he demanded.

Konrad flinched under his hand and tried to squirm away. “I’m trying to ask her if she understands me, but I don’t think I have it right.” He cast another desperate look at Reel, and she realized that he was lying to the other men.

Playing along could hardly put her in a worse position. They thought she was a dumb beast? Then that’s what she’d give them. Roaring, she dashed herself against the bars again and again, slamming her shell into the metal and straining to reach the men through the gaps. Von Braun and Lusser took a hurried step back, Lusser dragging Konrad in front of himself like a shield.

“Well that clearly didn’t work,” he snarled, pushing Konrad stumbling away. “I think you’ve fried your brain.”

“Wait! Let me try something else,” Konrad said, turning to Reel again with a sheen of nervous perspiration on his face. “Wait. I get you out.” He caught her eye, his expression desperate. “Captain coming.”

Hope blossomed in her chest, but she didn’t dare give any sign that she understood. Instead, she screamed defiance at them and smashed into the bars again. They shuddered under the impact, ringing as her scales scraped along them.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” Konrad said, lifting his hands apologetically. “The words are all jumbled in my head.”

“Useless,” Lusser spat. “This has been a huge waste of my time.”

Konrad ducked his head, seeming to accept the rebuke, but he threw another glance at Reel. Lusser saw it too, and narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

“Gentlemen,” Von Braun broke in wearily. “I understand that the last few days have been stressful, but let’s just…” He sighed. “Keep it together. Konrad, continue working on it; if we can communicate with her that would be valuable. Dr. Lusser, would you please show us both the progress on your other project? I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.”

“Certainly, Werner.” Lusser answered with a casual wave of his hand. Gone were the obsequious honorifics he’d favored before; Reel wondered what had changed. Lusser took his time turning to follow the other men out, glancing between between Konrad and Reel with glittering, suspicious eyes.

He knows, Reel thought with a surge of panic. Or at least, he suspected. Konrad played his part well, studiously avoiding Reel’s gaze as he turned away. Her eyes widened; the back of the man’s head was bandaged, and blood seeped through the white cloth. He’d tried to use the implant on himself, and had apparently gotten a fair bit out of it.

She slumped down at the back of her cell, feigning defeat, but her thoughts raced furiously as she watched them go. He wasn’t wearing the implant anymore, so the fact that he’d retained even fragments of her language was a marvel. What else might he have learned?

None of it made any sense. Everything she knew about the implants suggested that it shouldn’t have worked for him at all, but that was clearly wrong; nothing else could explain what she’d seen, what she’d heard. She touched the raw flesh of her own head again; yes, that was it, she was sure of it.

She wanted to trust him, but he was part of all this. Maybe he hadn’t known. But that didn’t make any sense, why wouldn’t they have told him? Konrad was an important part of the project; they’d have to involve him.

And yet…he’d lied to his companions just now, repeatedly. To his superiors, faking that he couldn’t actually speak her language. So had those lies been for her benefit, or theirs? Konrad could be trying to fool her, trying to lull her into trusting him again, so he could ply her for information about the pieces of the ship they were working on, maybe?

She rubbed at her head again and realized that she didn’t hurt the way she expected to. No implant trying to rattle my head apart for asking simple questions. She thought ruefully. Cut off she might have been, but at least this offered some respite from the constant buzzing of the infernal machine. Installing it had probably been quite a shock to Konrad; he was always asking questions. It would have gone crazy as soon as it made good contact.

She paused on that thought, wondering again why he’d lied. If he was being honest with her, then surely he was putting himself in tremendous danger…He might end up caged right alongside her. “Wait,” he’d said. “I get you out.” That certainly sounded like he meant to help her, but she couldn’t know for sure. It required her to trust him, and she was sick to death of leaving her fate in someone else’s hands.

Of course, look at where trying to make your own decisions landed you. Rising to her feet, she padded back across the cell to the door and gripped the bars, glaring at her captors. One of them took a careful look at her to make sure he was out of reach, and then turned back around, pointedly ignoring her. If she didn’t try to attack the bars, they apparently didn’t care if she stood there.

The bars shifted under her hands. Not much, not more than a scale’s breadth, but a little. Chancing a glance down, she peered at the smooth stone where the bars met the floor. Her breath caught.

Fine cracks radiated out from the bars, where the stone had fractured in a dozen places. The bars were still solid, but it looked like a another solid hit might knock several of them loose. They’d built this place for human prisoners, and even the largest of those was a fair bit smaller than she was. If she could get one or two of the bars out…it might be enough to make a gap she could squeeze through. She could break free from this cell.

She hesitated. Part of her wanted nothing more than to take a running start from the back of her cell, smash through and batter the two guards into submission with their own weapons. She’d take one of the weapons, and then…

The thought petered out. And then what? Fight her way to her destroyed and useless ship? Outrun every soldier on the base? Flee into the surrounding countryside, with no way to get home? They’d catch her again in minutes, just like last time. With a supreme effort of will, she released the bars and retreated to the corner of her cell again, huddling down with her arms around her knees, propped up on her tail. If her jailors realized that she’d weakened the cell, they would just move her somewhere more secure, or they’d find or build a cell that she couldn’t break. And if Konrad really did mean to help her, it might make it harder for him too, maybe even impossible.

The answer, she realized with disgust, was to wait. Either for Konrad to act, or for something to happen, something that might create an opportunity for her to escape. She hated waiting under the best of circumstances, and now she had to do so in a bare cell no more than a few paces across. Maddening.

She curled her claws into a fist and thumped her leg with slow determined blows. She would get out of here, with or without help. If her father had really been on his way to get her when she talked to him, then he’d be here within three days. If Konrad didn’t do or say something before then, she’d move.

Relaxing her fist with an effort, she leaned back against the wall, feeling a sudden, absurd rush of gratitude that she didn’t have her implant for a moment. Sure, she couldn’t talk to anyone, but it was also quiet inside her head, for the first time since she’d put the implant on. No checklists screaming for attention, no schedule hammering at her nerves, and no one calling for her attention. She’d forgotten what it was like, to be truly alone in her own head. She’d never done a simulation for breaking out of a cage either, so it would have been more hindrance than help. By the black, it was easier to think without the blasted thing.

That realization unnerved her a little bit. The implants aided cognition, that was what Argo and Arcturus had always taught her. If that wasn’t the case, then why did they wear them at all?

“If I get out of here,” she muttered to herself. “I’m going to figure it out.” She paused, and then corrected herself with more confidence than she felt. “When I get out of here, that is.”